 103.9 FM, WOZO Radio Knoxville. Ladies and gentlemen, digital free thought radio hour. Hello and welcome to the digital free thought radio hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday morning, June 20th, 2021. I'm Larry Rhodes or Doubter 5 and as usual we'll have our co-host Wombat on the line with us. Hello Wombat. One fist for justice, the other fist for... For what? Justice against. I can't tattoo it. Yeah, peace. Okay, just cut it out. Yeah, I know. I don't know what happened. We got a bad way. Anyway, what are you going to do? Today's guests are Don Fire, George Brooklyn, we're two and a half, Richard Higgs and V. John Richards. Hello all. International show for sure. Digital free thought radio hour is a talk radio show about atheism, free thought, rational thought, humanism and the sciences. Conversely, we'll also talk about religion, religious faith, God's holy books and superstition. Wombat, what's our topic today? We had so many topics going into the start of the show, but generally we're going to touch on a couple of subjects. One being is religious thinking harmful. And two, does it do more harm than good? And what else flourishes from those kinds of conversations? But before we get into it, I'm going to throw it up to our own Dreadpire Higgs for our weekly invocation. There's noodly... How rudely, Lord, who art in a colander, hallowed be thy noodles. Thy flood be run, thy sauce be yum, with meat as it is with vegetables. This day our garlic bread, and forgive us our cussing, as we put up with those who cuss against us. We need us not into ketoism, but deliver us some carbs, for thine are the noodles and the grasses and the grog, whenever and ever. Raw. Now here's the thing, I'm trying to do some sodium reduction. Does pasta farinism offer any salt-free or salt-reduced sauces for a pasta? Or does that last for me? Absolutely, no, no. Fantastic. You can do whatever you want with your sauce. Guys, I want to do a quick, super fast. You won't even realize it before it ends. Super, super quick, wonderfully short summary of how everybody's doing all at once. We're all just going to say how we're doing it at once. No wait, never mind, I have a better idea. Dreadpire at one at a time, how have you been since last week? Well, not too bad actually, and I was just on with John Richards yesterday for an hour-long interview with his free thought channel. And I thought that went really well. We had a good chat and a fun time, so yeah, that was good. Now here's the question, were you actually able to meet on time with each other? Yes, yes, we in fact got together 10 minutes beforehand to make sure we were all queued up. Fantastic. Yeah, and also we had our past at on Friday, so much feasting and grogging and fasting. Very, very cool. I'm happy to hear that. That's good vibes all around. John, we'll throw it to you. How have you been? How's the interview? How's the family? Well, everything's fine here. Thank you very much. I got an excellent father's day present, which I could be wearing, but I'm not. It's a shirt, so I'm very pleased with that. What's the shirt saying? You can't just leave it at that. No, it's not a t-shirt. No, it's I guess it's a denim. Can I mention a trade name here? Sure, absolutely. It's that firm that makes jeans. Okay. So I'm very pleased with that. Very cool. And not only was I hosting thread last night on the free thought hour chat show, but also I staged my usual weekly global Atheist news, which went out just before. So I'm trying to take over Saturday nights. Not bad. Yeah, I've been seeing a lot of updates on my YouTube and the stuff that you produce is pretty good quality too. Where can people check that out again? Just at the start of the show. Can you plug that? Thank you. I'm going to go to YouTube and go to free thought productions. Free thought productions. There's an archive of all my shows. Yeah, global Atheist news. That's one of the playlists. Yes, that goes back to the beginning of this year every week. But there's other playlists that go back three or four years. Wow. Because I've been making these videos, doing these live streams for a long time. Very cool. All right. So now we're going to throw it up to Scott. Scott, you got a light show. You got laptops going on in the background. What's going on? Oh, man, I am learning my new software that I downloaded. And so, you know, I'm just tinkering around trying to figure it out and optimize on that. So other than that, I mean, the new music project started for me. I think I mentioned it maybe last week, but it's Debra McGone written by Grammy, you know, songwriter, Grammy winning songwriters and stuff like that. This is dedicated to secular humanism. Oh, cool. This song is called A Better Place. It's how to make how we can all get along and talk to one another and make the world better and work together towards that end. So it's a really good song. It's picking up steam. We're even talking about a guy named RuPaul doing performance on it. Yeah, so he wants to jump on it. Nice. So that's going on last weekend. My channel called Exploring Epistemology. I had Anthony Magnobosco on last weekend. That went really well. And we're just looking forward to this next show that's coming up Tuesday. And I'm going to try to do some SE with a Christian presupposition list on whatever he wants to talk about. So that's going on. And other than that, I would say I measure greatness not based on the actions of one person, but how well that one person can help other people become great too. And you have been instrumental in helping me find good sense to look for and nice to figure out like what the best quality sound is. So there's a real greatness there. And I thank you very much for sharing it. Oh, you're welcome. No problem at all. We're going to go to the troublemaker himself, George Brown. George Brown, how you Vincent's last week? The notorious. I've been good. Nice. I was like, Ben, in general, have you found any new coffee that you you're into? Yes. Well, yeah, I've been digging around at the stores. Nice. I'm slumming. I went to Walmart and I got Walmart's. What is it? Walmart's own espresso. Interesting. Interesting. All roads leave. It's right. It's right here in front of me right now. What do you think? 10 out of 10, 11 out of 10? It's surprisingly decent. It's surprisingly decent. That's. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. But I've been getting into rock and roll and into country music. I'm classically trained musicians. So I'm, I'm just kind of like rediscovering pop music in the popular realm and enjoying myself. You are like. Behind your leagues behind. Let me tell you something. I saw I had a friend who I was had a daughter who sent me a YouTube video of a song that she liked. And it was like something by Lil Nas X. And I thought I was good on like where pop music was for kids these days. I have no clue what I was listening to. I had no clue what I was watching. It had 230 million views. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this, so this is where we're at now. Okay. Well. Well, I go back to where wider fools fall in love, you know. Yeah. Yeah. So I'm going back into the beginnings of rock and roll. Nice. Nice. And of course, R and B was way before it too. Confession. Oh, go for it. I remember that too. So you, I was just going to say a word that I'm not supposed to say. Yeah, please. Larry throwing it up to you. How you been since last week, my friend? I've been just fine. I'm just doing some writing. I got back out yesterday and wrote for about an hour or so. It's beautiful. Nice. I tried to do it early in the before the heat in the day. There's my back. There we go. See it for YouTube viewers. And I'm really enjoying it. I put over. It's got a four sale sign on the front of it. It's got a four sale sign on it. Yeah. That was a couple of years ago, but I'm 71. So if anybody wants to buy it, I think I'd let it go. I'm sure my, my better half would be happy for me to do that. Nice. Nice. She worries about me. Okay. I've been learning how to play disc golf since COVID's been over and finding some new activities to do outside. Thing is my form's not very good. And I've been doing nothing but nine holes for like Friday, Saturday, Sunday, Friday, Saturday, Sunday. I feel like I'm doing harm to my back, but what could be more harmful than disc golf, then religious thinking possibly? Oh, there's a transition for you guys. Larry, why? There you go. Larry, why introduce the topic? What do you think? The topic? Yeah. Oh. Well, I've got a base, what I was going to say today on a podcast, I mean, a blog that I have on my site on digitalfreethought.com slash blog. And it's called, what is so wrong with religion? And we could go. I mean, I could sit here and talk. I know you're reading this article for the next hour, but let's just go over the very first thing, which is divisiveness. It divides us into us, them groups all over the country. I was talking, I mean, all over the world. I was talking to one Christian the other day and I was telling him how divisive religion was. And he said, yeah, sure. But if everybody was a Christian and understood the truth of Christianity and converted to Christian, we wouldn't have any more wars. And you mean like in Northern Ireland, you know, where the Christians are fighting each other and have been for years and bombing each other. But it's more than that. It's like the decades of violence between the Jews and the Muslims, the decades of violence between Catholics and Protestants, capital crimes against women's health centers. I mean, they feel so emboldened by their religion. Self-righteous? Yes, self-righteous. They have actually gone into women's health centers, abortion clinics, if you want to call them that, and killed doctors before and threatened the people who are waiting outside trying to come in. And not to mention 9-11. It was us versus them. It was a religious faith-based act. And then we had a war on terror after that, more or less based on religion. And then we had a conflict of unity against Islam at the basis of it. But it's just on and on and on. And that's just the violence. And I didn't really get into the history of it, like the Crusades, the Spanish Inquisition, the witch trials, perpetuations, slavery, just on and on. John, you wanted to comment? Yeah, and it's in all directions, isn't it? I mean, yes, the attack on the Twin Towers was an Islamic fundamentalist attack. But shortly afterwards, George W. came on and said, you're either with us or against us. So the divisiveness is mutual. Oh, yeah. You know, I would say this. It's not that religion, here's my slightly opposite take. I know it's a bit nuanced, but I don't think religion makes people want to cause harm or have wars. I think human beings have a proclivity to conflict, especially in groups, because it's very hard to make empathetic people or understanding. And it's a lot easier to react in a violent way, just to immediately protect the things that you hold dear. Like we evolutionarily cited towards quick reactions of violence to protect the things that we care about rather than empathetic understanding of people. But because of that, religion also is a tool that helps people make very rash generalizations about other groups of people. And I feel like that's the crux behind it. John, what do you think? You're absolutely right. There are other reasons for tribal divisions. But there's only one reason which is based on a non-evidential deity. There's only one that's based on a non-evidential. All of the other reasons for having tribal differences might be considered to be genuine, real grievances. But this one that's based on him up there has never been shown to be substantiated by any evidence. I'm going to think about that. Larry, what do you got? I've talked to people and they say, well, you think getting rid of religion will get rid of war? It would get rid of one of the major reasons for war. We still have wars, but that would be, like John was saying, for other reasons like territoriality, commerce, maybe even race. There are other reasons that people fight each other. But one of the main reasons is religion. And it would get rid of that reason. Yeah, I was going to say that, of course, I used to be a Jehovah's Witness and one of the things that they taught was not to eat blood or take blood products. And so they would let their children die rather than take a blood transfusion. So these are harmful things that are rooted in religion. Now that one right there, before I became a Jehovah Witness, I never even thought that blood transfusions would be against God in any kind of way. So the thing about that is religion directly teaches people to behave a certain way that's harmful directly. So that one, I think, is a really clear cut example. Yeah, I'm putting a lot of thought into what you were saying, John, in that I cannot come up with examples immediately of other supernatural-based causes or rationales to go at war with another country. It tends to be the case that the religion aspect tends to be one of the sole supernatural motivators, or not really supernatural, but just in that category of, I have an impression of what this being is telling me, let's go to war because these guys have a different impression of what a different being might be telling them. And that's justification enough for us to go over there and take their stuff. Yeah, we agree, and then that happens. I've never heard of a war that's been fought over my ghost. Though, you know, human history is a long time. You never know. Maybe there are examples of that. Though I think it's obviously more devastating the recent examples that we have where we can see, you know, that kind of rationale being used as motivators. So even if it happened 10,000 years ago, like clearly now has more damage. Scott, what do you think? I'm going to ask you, what about the Sikhs? I think they're a pacifist kind of religion. Do they, what sort of harm do they cause? I'm trying to think. I just don't know much about them other than the fact that they're pacifists, and I think they're a branch of Hinduism. No, they're not. George, you got to wait. You got to wait. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. Go ahead. And then we'll go to Dredd. George, what do you think? I was just going to talk about the Sikhs, as I understand them, which is not a whole lot, but I have met a couple. First of all, the Sikh temple near where I used to live, they had a shootout, in fact, among the members. So it's a fairly new religion, and there's a lot of economics involved in it, and I don't know much more than that. I think Sikhism predates even America, so it's all a realm of perspectives of how new. I don't know if they have a Punjab, Punjab has a standing military or anything like that, and I don't know what the ideals are in terms of violence or not. Maybe Dredd, I saw your hand raised, or John, either of you guys like to fill on on this? I just want to cut in because you say, Sikhism predates even America. Yeah, we haven't been around for a long time. John's the resident English person here, so he can laugh maybe for a couple thousand years longer than us, but China people are like, two thousand years get out of here, right? Well, Stonehenge is reckon to be about six thousand years old. You can't claim Stonehenge. You can't claim Stonehenge. You get Henry the first, and that's it. Maybe absolutely the conqueror at most. All right. There was a woodhenge before Stonehenge. Okay. Dredd, did you want to weigh in? Did you? Oh, you're on mute, my friend. Yeah. So my understanding is that Sikhism is almost atheistic. They do have a God belief. There is a monotheist aspect. Well, yeah, I mean, it's a lot different than what our standard Abrahamic religions are. Sure. So it has its own sort of class, I guess. The only issue why I bring that up is I tend to see a lot of atheists who are atheists, but don't like the atheist label, call themselves spiritual or Buddhist or Sikh. And it's like those have God aspects or dogma associated with them. And it feels like you'd be better off just calling yourself an atheist, though I wouldn't say it. Call yourself whatever you want to call yourself. But don't take something that's already an established thing and skew it through a personal lens where it's like, ah, but this is really what atheism is like. No, no, it's just further mudding the water. I worry about stuff like that. Larry, you want to weigh in? Yes, I was just going to say that we're talking about religion in general. But I think that there's a definite escalation of violence in the Western religions versus the Eastern. The Eastern religions are generally philosophical. They're generally atheistic, like Taoism and Shintoism, Confuciism. Several of those religions don't even have a God. They have ancestral worship. So they don't tend to toward violence so much as the Western religions do. The monotheistic, totalitarian religions of, say, Judaism, Islam and Christianity. They're more... Good points. Also, great history awards. Oh, yeah. Right? Thanks. It's one of those things where it's like, religion only gives another excuse and perhaps even a more popular one because I can see Western religions being a motivator for a lot more damage than Eastern religions. He thinks the cup's half full. Right. I think we should move on to some other things. I've got a list of 27 things here. One of the other things that religions tend to do, which is harmful, is they tend to suppress or resist the advances of science, the knowledge that we generate through science. The original sin itself comes from man eating from the tree of knowledge and that was a bad thing in the Christian Judaism tradition. It's like the more you know the worse it is for them accordingly. But think about how they oppose the teaching of evolution. Many cosmology, even the Pope himself one time said that we shouldn't examine the Big Bang because it would be in the... It's reserved for the domain of God. Right. So we shouldn't even go there and look at it. Et cetera, et cetera. They've been resisting a scientific advancement down through the ages. Yeah. Dredd, you just took yourself off mute. Did you want to say anything? No. Cool. But I agreed. Let me tell you this, Dredd. Not only are they suppressing science, but they can't even let you take a picture with a hat on at a driver's license. And then evidence and think critically. You know there was a period of time when people thought the stars were a blanket with pop holes marked. Pop through them with light shining through from the heavens into the sky. And in fact, there are flat earthers that still do. No. Well, there you go. And you know what? A lot of flat earthers fundamentally Christian. I'm just going to throw that out as well. Like you... All the age of the earth is something else. Yeah. I've seen enough documentaries on flat earth where I'm like these guys are just hardcore Christians. Excuse me first. Yeah, but go ahead. Sorry. Go ahead, Lair. Go ahead. I was just going to say that they fight the advancement of our carbon dating radiological dating because they can't have an old earth. Because the Bible says it's a young earth and they can't have the contradiction there. Right. Evolution, of course, because they have Adam and Eve. They fight against teaching evolution in school and they can't have for over 100 years now of officially in our legal establishments. And what's your part? Go for it. I was just watched a program here produced by Bill Nye and his interactions with Ken Ham. You know, there's the Ark that he's got down south there somewhere. And then the creationist museum. I mean, clearly some of those things in there are a travesty to current understanding of humanity and of the universe and of nature and all the rest of it. It's an incredible hour to watch. Yeah. And to speak on Ken Ham, we actually, Eric and I, Boudreau and I went up to the Ark Museum to do SE with the protesters of the Ark, as well as the counter protesters. And we found a great way to de-escalate and have some really good conversations there. Those are on my YouTube channel. But I would say this. I don't care if someone wants to build a big boat because they like a book. What bothered me was that they used tax money from the state to support that and continue to use tax money to fund it despite the fact that as a commercial entity, it makes no profit whatsoever. It actually just spends money. I feel like it's a travesty that state can support one religion pet project or arts and crafts project. And it's like, stop, stop, please. John, got a question for you. We were talking about religion inhibiting science. Did you have examples of that in English schools? Because I can tell you, in the South, we know the big ones that get hit. But in England, is it a similar weight? Pretty much most English schools allow the teaching of evolution. There's one or two that are unofficial schools. I haven't been recognized. They're illegal schools where they secretly meet. They shepherd their children into a big house very often in London. And they hold a Jewish type of school. And there, the curriculum is entirely different. And if they are discovered, it's a police matter to get. Wow. Yeah. So it does happen. Is there a child indoctrination and that's illegal? Yeah. Yeah, you can't. I love it. A school must be registered. It must be registered. And these are unregistered. So that is outside of the jurisdiction. George. I don't know whether I've told this before, but I used to teach A-Level Biology, which was the pre-university qualification. And I started one year with a class in the subject area of evolution. And shortly afterwards, one of the key girls, who was one of the star pupils potentially, came to me and said that my parents say I've got to change subject. Oh, yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I've seen that and I've heard that. Even at our school at Georgia Tech, I've gotten comments like that from people. I feel like this is challenging my religious beliefs. I don't think I want to be an engineer or I should change that subject. That's right. But I wanted to pick up on something that Larry said, because as an ex-science teacher, I've got some tactics to deal with some of these young Earth creationists who disrespect carbon dating. They're using the wrong, they're targeting the wrong tool because the clue is in the name. Carbon dating dates things that contain carbon, you know? And that is pretty much organic things, things that were once alive. Not fossils. In fossils, the material has been replaced by rock. It's been ossified in one way or another. There are a number of different methods in which that occurs. But the point is that carbon dating is only a reliable method for about 50 years back, 50,000 years in the past, because the half-life of carbon-14 simply isn't long enough. And to date things that are older than that, you know, give the truth about the age of the Earth, we've got to use other isotopes like uranium and radon, for example. Nice. Very cool. Thanks for that lesson. George, it's not only if you want to say something a bit back. Do you still remember? Do I remember? I wanted to ask John something that he said. I was curious about this. You said you were talking about some sort of age school that was religious and you said it was a Jewish type of school. Can you elaborate on that, please? I could Google it and send you a link. Hey, how about that? I don't have it in here, I'm afraid, but I know that it comes to my attention periodically, because as you know, as I said at the start of the show, I do a weekly global atheist news show. And I get a lot of items which are about religious horrors, religious atrocities, mostly from countries like Nigeria, Pakistan, sometimes Iran, but news doesn't come out of there very well. And in my crawling the internet for information which might be a useful news item, it's come to my attention that there are these illegal Jewish schools that are operated, they're a fee-paying school, they're not recognized by the country. And because they are secret, they do their own curriculum. It's like being homeschooled. Why are they illegal? That's my question. Right, it's because to hold a school in this country, you must be registered, you must be on the list on the register so that you can be inspected by Her Majesty's education inspectors to see the standard. I dig it. So I'm assuming that there are legal Jewish schools where you are. Oh yeah, definitely. Okay, that was my question. So where I live here, there are Jewish temples listed among the churches that are listed in the weekly newspaper. And they're not real Jewish temples. They're fake as far as I'm concerned. They're messianic after the fact, Jewish organizations. So I get confused and that's what I wanted to answer. That's totally fair. Guys, we're nearing the bottom of the half hour pretty soon. Jesus Jews, that's what you mean. Yeah, rounding out. Larry, would you mind taking us out and then we come right back in and we'll catch up when we left off? All righty. Excuse me, this is the digital free thought radio hour on WOZO Radio 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. And we'll be right back after this short break. 103.9 FM WOZO Radio, Knoxville. Welcome back to the second half of the digital free thought radio hour. I'm Dodder Five and we're on WOZO Radio 103.9 FM. I'll get it right in a second. 103.9 LP FM right here in Knoxville, Tennessee. Today is Sunday June 20th, 2021. And now let's talk about the Atheist Society of Knoxville or ASK founded in 2020. I'm sorry, make that 2002. We're in our 19th year. ASK has over a thousand members and we have weekly Zoom and in-person meetings. In-person meetings are at Barley's Taproom in Pizzeria in Knoxville's Old City out on the patio. You can also find us on Facebook, meetup.com or at KnoxvilleAtheist.org or just Google Knoxville Atheist. It's just that simple. By the way, if you don't live in Knoxville you should still go to Meetup and do a search for an Atheist group in your town. Don't find one. Start one. Right, one where you want to pick up. We're learning about Jewish schools and the illegal Jewish schools. This is a brand new concept for me. But Dredd has now something he'd like to bring to the table. What's up, Dredd? Well, it's just going back to something John had mentioned earlier about radio carbon dating. And that there's a number of scales by which we measure things in the past. Dendrochronology being counting tree rings. And that'd be a simple, very obvious way of determining how old something is and then how that matches up with radio carbon dating. And these overlapping scales of geologic time allow us to have considerable confidence in each of those methods of dating things. So I just wanted to make that point. That's a great point. They correlate each other. Different systems telling the same narrative is a very compelling series of tests in science. I would like to say this though. My issue isn't so much with the veracity of element dating. I have a very good degree of skepticism for it and it stood up to that skepticism which makes me very confident that it's a reliable test process. What I have an issue with is double standard that's applied when a Christian hears carbon dating and they think, yeah, but that's not organic material and there's a lack of scientific veracity for these 10 elements. Fluoride actually has a different half-life versus when they apply that same standard to their God belief. It's like, well, it's true because it's in a book and my pastor said it's true. It's like you have two completely different levels of skepticism that you're using and the one that you have more skepticism for you're not allowing through and the one they have the least amount for you're letting through and that's dangerous. Scott. So ironic, just yesterday I was having a conversation with a creationist and his biggest criticism against evolution he told me, he said, see, the thing is you believe stuff and you can't sit there and tell me that you've seen with your own two eyes dogs coming from non-dogs. You've never seen that. So how are you ever going to convince me? And I'm like, but have you ever seen Jesus resurrected? No. Two standards. That goes on and on. And that argument, Scott, is what the Kim Ham uses often. Oh, my gosh. That's so silly. Bill, I would say this. It's pretty simple to say, hey, do you have kids? Yes. Do they look exactly like you? No. Do they look exactly like your grandparents? No. What do you think you call that? You call that small changes over generations, right? There's a word for that. You might want to look it up. It's awesome. It's the third pillar of biology. Larry, you had a comment too. Was it just to tell us to take a break or did you have some compelling new things? Are you moving down the list? Yeah. Yeah, I can certainly go on to the next one. One thing about religion is that they tell, they teach us, especially the Western religions and not so much the Eastern, is that we're born tainted with sin or impure and dirty from being a baby. I mean, we're born with guilt and we have to spend the rest of our lives trying to make up for the sins of the first humans according to them. So, I mean, you like start off in the hole. You're a sinner and everybody is. You start with a debt. Yeah, that's right. And then you have to try to work your way back to it. It's like built in guilt. Which, you know, as a mental health perspective, isn't good for you. Dred, do you want to weigh on that? Yeah, well, I was just going to say, it's interesting that the whole, of course, the whole idea of sin is, you know, inculcated into children and whatnot by people who claim to be the only way out of sin. It is both the poison and the cure. It's like the guy who's selling you the antidote is also the person who injects you with poison. Exactly. Dan Barker. John, one at a time. What do you got? It's a protection racket. It is. Larry, what do you got? You're right about the mental problems that it causes. There's a lot of suicidal homosexuals who think that the way they are made is sinful. Right. Suicidal trans, suicidal lot. Yeah, especially. Yeah. Larry. Well, I like to put it, it's like you have an omniscient God watching every thought and every move and every action ready to cast you into hell, you know, an eternity of painful torture for the slightest infraction. And to me, that's just the very definition of paranoia. You've got somebody watching you all the time, and that can't lead to positive outcomes of mental health. But he loves you. Yeah, but he loves you. That's even worse. George. That's reinforced with Santa Claus. George, you wanted to weigh in. What's up? Yeah, I got a couple of things to mention. The first one is that as a very non-observant person with a Jewish background, I'm not aware of Jews being born with original sin. Hmm. What was the whole garden thing? Yeah. Well, it somehow, it just doesn't seem to come out in the wash, you know. I'm just never heard of people. But George is an organic atheist. Like he's never had that. Yeah, I'm an organic atheist. It's maybe something that I don't know. But believe me, I have never heard. I mean, coming out of a city where there are a lot of Jewish people around. Do they believe in sin? They believe that sin is real? Yeah. Larry, the only thing I can answer you with is that I have never heard a Jewish person use that term or come anywhere near original sin. Yeah, but I'm asking about sin. Anything like it. Original sin. Sin in general. Were there sins when your community, even as an atheist? Not, not, it's just not a big deal. Okay. So it was aware, but it wasn't a prevailing thing. That's right. Christianity would take that term from the Old Testament. The situation where Adam and Eve sinned against God and they called it the original sin. But the Old Testament was the Jewish Torah. Yes. Yes. However, there's a lot in the interpretation of it though among the living practitioners today, let's say, is very different, I think. And of course, you got to understand about the Jewish religion is that there are at least three major divisions of it and that the belief structure may not be quite the same from one to the next. I'm going to throw this out about Christianity. The main thing I've always was taught from the Old Testament was Genesis, like all the stories that were there. So the concept of original sin was something that was at least on a monthly basis drilled into us, whether we're Baptist or Methodist or Pentecostal or Evangelical or Methodist, if I had said that already. Like whatever church we went to, drilled in the idea of original sin. So Christians really have taken that and made it more popular. So I wouldn't be surprised if for Jew it's like, there's so many other chapters in that book. It's a pretty good book. John, I want to finish what I was saying, if I may. Sure, sure, sure. Which is the next part of this, which is that around here were a lot of people who believe in a get out of jail card, which is that at the end of Woodall, if you confess that you believe in our Lord, you're going to go to heaven anyway. So it doesn't matter. I'm just saved. That's their tagline bumper sticker. You know what I'm saying? John, you're looking relaxed. No, that's something else I don't have experience with, so I can't say. John, did you want to say anything? You were looking relaxed there on the beach. Judaism seems to me to be a religion which you can unobserve quite and get away with it and still be considered to be a Jew. And yet you will still check the box for Jew when it comes to selection describing your religion. Sure, yeah. I mean, it is one of those things where it's like as much a cultural identity as it is a religious practice and you can easily spifercate the two. And that's not limited to Jews. No, no, no, no. Pasifarians got that too. Black people got that as well, yeah. Hey, George. George, you're back on the mic. What's up? I want to give an example of that. If I can tell a little story. Oh, George, the short show. Go for it. Go for it. Well, many years ago, we were living on a farm out in the country in Connecticut where there were a lot of Jewish farmers and my landlord was a Jewish farmer and he was Orthodox Jew. So it was Saturday and my wife and I were driving down the road and my landlord was trudging down the highway with his son and he waved at us. So I stopped. He said, can you give us a ride to the temple? I said, sure, get in the back, you know. So Max got in the back seat with his son and I said, Max, aren't you supposed to not be driving in a car on the Sabbath? He says, ah, it says in the Torah, you're not supposed to drive. It says nothing about being a passenger. Now, I think that... I have to say that in my experience there's a tradition in the Jewish culture of reasoning and arguing and working things through and I think that's a lot of it, you know, is to look through the Torah and see what you can get away with. Interesting. Scott. Yeah, just real quick. A couple of years ago, kind of a long time ago, a Jewish kid on a Saturday asked me to light his cigarette for him and he gave me the lighter. I was like, what? And he said, because I can't make fires to the Sabbath. Yeah, I understand in Israel they have a whole tradition of doing this stuff like that. Yeah. You know, there's a lot of... maybe it's not so much an innovation of science but also just practicality as well in a lot of cases where it's like, hey, I need a light of fire or tie a shoe or drive myself somewhere. And also to go back to the mental health aspect, like if you had a kid, if you're a single parent and you have a kid that's like having a seizure and you need to take him to the hospital and you can't drive on Sabbath day, you're not going to wait until Monday. But if you take him to the hospital anyway, you know, breaking the rules of your religion, is it worth the extra guilt, you know? What are you going to do? You can, but why even... why would you have to ask for forgiveness if you're trying to protect your kid in the first place? Yeah, I hear you. What do you got? What's next on the list? Well, you know, you talk to Christians or whichever religious you're talking to and they'll tell you that the reason they believe it, even though if it doesn't make sense, is faith. They've got to have faith. They've been told all their life, you know, it's just believe on faith. Like faith will give them an answer, but it doesn't. It just stops them from asking questions and you can prove it to them real quick by saying, you know, are Muslims correct? Is Muhammad the latest, greatest prophet of God? And you see, you know, they don't believe that Jesus was the prophet. No, they're wrong. They're going to hell. Well, they are going to hell by practicing their faith. Their imams and preachers tell them that they have to believe what they say based on faith. Every other religion in the world uses faith to believe whatever they want to, but Christians or whatever will think while they're going to hell. Faith doesn't give you the answers. They're all mutually exclusive. John, when? Yeah, I go around. I get invited to speak to humanist groups and atheist groups and secular groups and university groups and places like that. And very often I give a presentation on belief. So I go through my reasoning and I end up showing them that belief is just an opinion about the unknown. You see. And then I cap that by saying... Oh, that's good. ...and faith. And I want to devalue belief. It's regarded to be too important. So I tell them, I get to the point of belief is an opinion about the unknown. And then I top it by saying and faith is belief on steroids. George, in your upbringing, was faith at all ever a component? We were talking about sin earlier, but have you ever used faith? Even colloquially? Oh, absolutely not. Absolutely not. It was completely alien to me. Okay. I mean, it's like I had a playmate down the street. He was raised in some sort of a Baptist type orientation. And one day he started talking about God to me. And I didn't know what he was talking about. He said, don't you believe in God? I said, gee, I don't know. And I asked my mother, I said, do we believe in God? She said, no, we believe in nature. I said, well, Lee just asked me. I said, what should I tell him? She said, tell him we believe in nature. So I went back and I told him I believed in nature and he didn't understand what I was talking about. So we were even. I can throw this out real quick. Maybe we can get a quick down table before we close out the show. But we have a very religious president, but one that is also open to the idea that there are other religions available. Like I think one of the things he did was protect abortion rights despite the fact that he's very Catholic on his own right. Very, very good. I'm America first, my own religion second. Great example. We didn't always used to have good presidents. And when we're going through that election night, I was very, very freaking out because it looked like we were going to have another uncomfortable four years. And I use uncomfortable as a euphemism in this case. But one of the things that our current president said during that night was to keep the faith and just keep believing despite the fact that the numbers were shifting slowly towards his end. And I had no other good scientific evidence to prove otherwise other than just staying optimistic and hopeful. And I think in that night, faith did help me get to sleep a little bit better that night. I'm not saying faith, this is what I'm not saying. Faith is not a good decision-making tool like to come up with conclusions. But I do think it's valuable in keeping you feeling nice. And as long as you're not using it as a, as a means to determine what's true and what's not true, you can use it as long as you're not doing that or using it to harm other people. I feel like there's some value there. Larry, what do you think? Does that seem reasonable? Well, we have to be careful not to equivocate. Okay, go for it. If you look up faith in the dictionary, you get two or three different definitions. Words can have different definitions. The faith you're talking about, like the faith of stepping on your break and having faith that it will stop your car. That's reasonable expectation based on everyday experience and years of everyday experience. Religious faith, I like the thing, and I think the dictionary will agree with me, is believing not only without evidence, but in the face of contradictory evidence. So you don't want to start using the word faith interchangeably when you're talking about religion and everyday stuff. You ought to make a distinction. That is a very good point. I'm actually going to take, I'm going to say it's not the distinction, the break example. It's exactly the, I don't have any scientific evidence to prove that Biden will win. In fact, it looks like he won't win, but he told me to keep faith anyway. And so in spite of the obvious data of numbers in front of me, I'm just going to go to sleep and hope that by the time I wake up, it's going to go like this, despite the fact that it's still trending this way. And I felt like in that aspect, in that aspect, it's like, ooh, there's a little bit of faith here, but I'm not going to use that as a tool. In that case, you're interchanging your faith with wishful thinking. It's wishful thinking at the best point. Yeah. And in my head, faith is a lot closer to that. Yeah. I feel like faith is a lot closer to wishful thinking than a lot of definitions in the Bible. Scott, what did you think? I was just going to say, you just proved that faith works. Dread. My favorite definition of faith is faith is belief without evidence. Believing without evidence. And I think it's important making sure that we also don't conflate the words faith and belief. Belief is based on observation on research experiments. And you know, you have, you actually don't have faith that your breaks are going to work. You have belief that your breaks are going to work based on the evidence that supported it. Can I throw that out? I actually like Dread's definition here. I would say knowledge is what you can demonstrate to be the case. Right? If I can't demonstrate it, but I still can be inclined to believe that it's true, then I have faith because I just lacked the demonstration for it. Maybe I have some good evidence to support it. And then when I have no evidence, I'm in faith territory where it's just wishy-washy land. Larry, what do you think? Well, I'm a little shy away from the word belief like that because there's so many believers out there that believe on things because of repetition. Things that they are told are true. And they take them on faith and end up believing on those and having these whole set of beliefs that are not based on any fact. Yeah. So I'll go back to what John had said. Yeah, I'd be valued belief because of that only because I'd rather have knowledge. And I'm willing to say I don't know it if all I have is belief in faith to support an idea. I'd rather just be like, hey, I don't know that. That's on the shelf. And I don't know it's a wonderful answer at least in the realm of science. So John, what do you think? Well, a couple of things. First of all, you, as Scott said, you proved that faith worked, but no better than a teddy bear, which could also have helped you to sleep. I did have a teddy bear growing up, but I don't know where it is anymore. Isn't that one of those sad things you think about as an adult? Kids keep the bears. Give us a sentence of interest. We'll get you a new one. John, could you plug your show again? Where can we find you at? Free thought productions on YouTube. Very, very cool. Yeah, there's lots of stuff there. Who's your next guest? Have you already lined it up? Well, it may be the bearded heretic. But I'm still waiting for him to confirm. Last time he was due to come on, he had to pull out because of a family event. But I can tell you that the week after, that's July the third, I've got Catherine, what's her name? Catherine Johnson. Catherine Roberts. She is a very interesting Canadian from Nova Scotia, who spent about 30 years as a pastor and then about 10 or 12 years ago. Not pastor. Sorry, sorry. Pastor. So sorry. So sorry. The main Canadian I know. My brain was like... She's at the other side of the country. She's in Nova Scotia. Okay. But she gave up the cloth about 10 or 12 years ago. And she's very active now in helping people to recover from religion. Well, speaking of interesting Canadians, Dred, where can we find your stuff at? Well, I stream this live every Sunday at 8 a.m. Pacific Standard Time or Pacific Daylight Time, depending which it is. And it's under Mind Pirate, M-I-N-D-P-Y-R-A-T-E. Very nice. Scott, I know you're looking forward to getting back to that music station behind you. Where can we find some of your stuff and keep track of your progress? You have a music vlog too. What's going on? Yeah. The best place is to go on dubshine.bandcamp.com. It's where I'm putting all my latest releases and stuff like that that I want to showcase. And you can download it from there. And of course, you can find me on Spotify, SoundCloud, everywhere else. But that's just a really good place to go to see what's happening with me. Very nice. Speaking of music, George, you're getting into rock and roll. Please give me some recommendations. I don't want to have any. I mean, I've been just listening to James. Oh, I don't know. Why do fools fall in love? Joni Mitchell, James Taylor. Nice. Very good. Names pop up. I find them to be very good musicians. Very, very cool. Yeah. You might love math rock since you have a classical background. There's some really, really intricate mathematics that go into the percussions of math rock. I'll make you some recommendations after the show. But you can find me on Let's Chat on YouTube and Let's Chat in general, Patreon, all that stuff. We'll see you next week. Larry, I have this real considerable problem. I know we're at the end of the show. We've been talking about it and I didn't want to say it, but I don't know what atheism is about. So like, can you, we maybe should have defined it, but do you have anything that I could, maybe a matter of fact, figure out more stuff about it? I have a book on that. Get out of town. It's called Atheism. I do. It's called Atheism. What's it all about? It's available on Amazon and it's also available on Kindle through Amazon. My own content can be found at digitalfreethought.com. Be sure to click on the blog button for a radio show archives, atheist songs, and many articles on the subject. If you're on YouTube, you can find me by searching for Daughter 5 or Larry Rhodes. If you have questions for the show, you can send them by email to askanatheistatnoxfilatheist.org. If you're a member of clergy, a preacher, a pastor, or a priest, but no longer believe in the claims of religion, there is help for you at theclergyproject.org. That's clergyproject.org. If you're watching this on YouTube, be sure to like and subscribe. This has been the Digital Freethought Radio Hour on WOZO Radio. Remember, everybody is going to somebody else's hell. The time to worry about it, it's when they prove that heavens and hells and souls are real. Until then, don't sweat it. Enjoy your life and we'll see you next week. Say bye everybody. Bye everybody. Am I going to your hell? I don't have a hell, but you're probably the Islamic hell or the Christian hell or any other hell.